Talk:Star Fleet Battles
Now that this SFB come up, I think we also need to specificly clarify something: That because its license stems from Franz Joseph and not from Paramount/Desilu, it's material lies outside the mandate of this wiki, and so should not be used as a direct reference source. If nothing else, this will make things a lot simpler, since SFB has it's own little universe with which most of the movies and later series don't mesh well at all.--Emperorkalan 18:25, 15 September 2006 (UTC) :Someone may want to phrase it and clarify it better. I wanted to have the article here though since Star Fleet Command is cited as an official source all over the place, and that game has its roots in Star Fleet Battles. If anything else, it's a good place to explain what Star Fleet Battles actually is, and why it's not a direct source, but the computer game that spawned from it is. --Vanguard ::Most certainly. You can't talk about SFC without mentioning SFB. It's just that, for example, the article here on the Kzinti mentions the Lyrans, but that's SFB material, not anything from a directly-licensed source. (And the Kzin-Lyran conflict can't be grandfathered in via SFC, because for that game the Kzinti were renamed.) And, of course, there's reams and reams of ship data -- much of it specific to the SFB-verse but not to Trek in general -- that we probably would like to avoid cross-referencing (cross-contaminating?) here.--Emperorkalan 21:46, 15 September 2006 (UTC) :Well, as far as ship data goes, I only put up the references to ship classes that were also in other sources (such as the Connie and the Tech Manual). The main reason for that was, again, the Saladin and Hermes write ups directly referenced the SFU versions of each ships, which ARE a bit different than the TM versions. Vanguard :Okay, question. In the article, it says that, while their main license comes from Franz Joseph, they do also have a "limited license from Paramount to continue". What does that mean, exactly, and why is it not sufficient for using SFB as a source? If they have any kind of license from Paramount, shouldn't that constitute a "licensed" product? I looked in the 'policies" section on this and couldn't find any distinction. While it's true that its lack of inclusion makes things a lot simpler, if it does count as a licensed source -- then it's Memory Beta's job to cover it, even if it does make things complicated. Xaqimorp (talk) 22:15, January 4, 2013 (UTC) ::It's not Memory Beta's job to cover it, it is not a licensed Star tRek product. ::The publishers of Star Fleet Battles were licensed by Ballantine Books and Franz Joseph's studio to use the artwork and original concepts in the Star Fleet Technical Manual. They were 'not licensed to use the name Star Trek. When the corporate owners of Star Trek were made aware of the game's release, they did not have sufficient legal grounds to abort the publication, but they took efforts to forbid the game from using the Star Trek franchise name, and also the game was forbidden to use any familiar/trademarked Star Trek characters. The SFB license is not to be a Star Trek product, it is a license to use some artwork and concepts from the Franz Joseph manual. -- Captain MKB 13:56, January 5, 2013 (UTC) :::But isn't their license to use the art and concepts you mentioned significant? I mean, of course they don't have the license to use the name 'Star Trek' as you said, but that by itself shouldn't be a problem. For example if Paramount or CBS right now granted the rights to a comic book publisher to make comics set in the Star Trek universe, using any concepts from the shows they chose, but forbade the use of the term Star Trek - would that make it not a Star Trek comic series? What if that publisher based their series on "Star Trek: Enterprise" but left the words 'Star Trek' out of the title, as in the first couple seasons of that show? It seems to me in that case it would clearly count as a source for Memory Beta. So if that's the case, then not having the license to use the phrase Star Trek isn't by itself sufficient to not count as licensed. :::As to them not being able to use specific trademarked characters -- well there are examples of other publishers who had a limited license to use only certain parts of Star Trek lore and who are included in Memory Beta. For example, and I could be remembering incorrectly on this, I believe that Interplay only had a license to use characters and concepts from TOS and no other series. So from that precedent, it seems to me that the restriction of the usage of certain aspects of trek lore from the license is also not sufficient to warrant non-inclusion. :::And the aspects of Star Trek that they are using, I think, are significant. It's not like it's some totally unrelated universe with an obscure historical connection to Star Trek. A simple glance at their website reveals that their universe includes an organization called Star Fleet and a Federation to which it belongs, and officers in Star Fleet wear familiar TOS uniforms complete with the familiar Starfleet logo. They fly around in what are unmistakably Constitution class ships, interacting with Klingons, Romulans, Gorn, and Tholians, all of whom use their familiar ships from the series. Not to mention their use of Tribbles, terms like "away team" and "captain's log" and so on and so forth. To quote from their website: "As is readily apparent, the STAR FLEET UNIVERSE is based on The Original Series of Star Trek" 1. :::So while the fictional history of their universe diverges from the path taken post-TOS (a la the Shatnerverse), it'd be pretty hard to argue that this isn't intended to be based on the Star Trek universe, and, at least in some capacity, licensed to be doing so. Xaqimorp (talk) 11:43, January 7, 2014 (UTC)